New York Surf Film Festival presents a screening of Abyss, friction free finless – musical notes whilst surfing, and A Hundred Miles to the End…

Abyss (2013) directed by Jay Grant, starring Creed McTaggart (10 minutes)
Take a dark and psychedelic voyage with Creed McTaggart as he messes with the hostile waters of Western Australia’s Indian ocean, set to one mind bending 10 minute track by Sleepy Sun. Abyss sends you back in time as it unveils and transforms a grip of differing shapes, sounds and personalities.

friction free finless – musical notes whilst surfing (2012) directed by Chris Duczynski, Starring: Derek Hynd, Ryan Burch, Taylor Miller and the Avalon crew (10 minutes)
All music performed by The Australian Chamber Orchestra in conjunction with Steve Pigram on vocals/guitar and Mark Atkins on didgeridoo.

Finless exponent Derek Hynd, Californian young gun Ryan Burch and Rusty Millers free-surfing daughter Taylor, take on a Western Australian desert reef on finless boards. They are accompanied by members of the Australian Chamber Orchestra led by artistic director Richard Tognetti and indigenous musicians Steve Pigram and Mark Atkins. Over two weeks they compose music, surf finless boards and shoot footage for a live performance project called The Reef, which would tour all around Australia. This is the story behind “The Reef”.

A Hundred Miles to the End (2013) directed by John Beattie, starring Balaram Stack, TJ Gumillea, Will Skudin, Leif Engstrom, Mikey DeTemple, Bruce Bailey, Josh Goetz and a host of others. (52 minutes)
Follow a lifelong Surfer as he re-visits the places he used to surf over his 48 years of surfing on Long Island. Starting at Long Beach in Western Long Island and heading East to Montauk “The End”.

Surfers are amazing creature, no matter what life throws their way, the are characteristically unfazed by setbacks and never give up.

Long Island native John Beattie was a lifelong surfer up until 2007 when he suffered a stroke. Beattie had to retire his surfboard. Instead, he picked up his camera and began to document his irrevocable love for surfing “As a way to remain connected to the sport I love so much I began to film others surfing,” Beattie said. “I decided that I wanted to give something back to the Long Island surfing community for all the good times and all the people I met and places I’ve been over the years.” From Long Beach to Montauk, Beattie set out on a journey to recount some of his favorite surf spots, hence the film’s title, A Hundred Miles to The End.

New York Surf Film Festival presents a screening of Sunyata Lapse, What to Wear, and Waverider…

Sunyata Lapse (2013) directed by Yarir Abou, starring Ibon Muguerza (23 minutes)
Ibon is a young basque guy that bring us a  message and a  reflexion about life…The state of mind he gets when he is focussed in NOW, The Sunyata, an illuminated void, this little lapse without reality, without time and without pain….just happiness…

What to Wear (2013) directed by Jennie Rutz (30 seconds)
A surfer girl wakes up in the morning and makes the not so difficult choice of what to wear. Music by Rosie and Me.

Jennie Rutz is an illustrator and animator from Canada, now living in Italy. She started surfing in 2012 in Sicily although she dreamed about blue waves all her life while growing up on the yellow plains of Alberta. She loves working with music and movement and exploring life from a girl’s perspective. She recently opened her first solo exhibition of original paintings in Palermo, Sicily entitled “Boys & Girls, Girls, Girls” which included surfing and the sea as it’s prominent theme.

Waverider  (2013) directed by Karl Lear, starring Isei Tokovou, Kelly Slater, Travis Logie, Jordy Smith, Mitch Coleborn, Patrick Gudauskas, CJ Hobgood, Joel Parkinson and Chad Campbell (62 minutes)
In the early 90?s, a photograph of a young boy dropping in on a huge unknown wave made the cover of Surfing Life. The photograph became iconic. 20 years later, the Fijian surfer the world had never heard of, earned the chance to compete against the best surfer the world has ever seen. This is his story.

At Cloudbreak, now rated by many as the best wave in the World, local boatman, Isei Tokovou won a wildcard entry into the Volcom Fiji Pro World Championship, with more than $400,000 in prize money. Surfing his home-­?break with hand-­?me-­?down boards and without a trainer or support team, Isei carries the hopes of a nation into competition.

New York Surf Film Festival presents a screening of Step N’ Soul, Cactus Wagon, and The North Canyon: Nazaré Calling…

Step N’ Soul  (2012) directed by Toma Jablon, starring Sam Bleakley (5 minutes)
Step N Soul is a short film that explores the synergy between jazz, surfing, dance and improvisation by capturing a series of surfing performances choreographed and synchronised to Wynton Marsalis Sunflowers track. It features English pro surfer Sam Bleakley who uses an mp3 waterproof player and surfs his longboard while listening to Marsalis track.

This is a unique approach to surf film making and surfing itself. The goal is to explore more of the potential the music brings to our experiences through action sport and life in general.

Cactus Wagon  (2012) directed by Denny Aaberg, starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Denny Aaberg (10 minutes)
When Big Wednesday went south, so did its star, Jan-Michael Vincent. He hauled the film’s screenwriter, Denny Aaberg, with him. Turns out Denny had a Super-8 Camera. Across the border and into the hills they went. To the ag towns and bracero buses of the Valle de San Quintin. Through the sage-to-Sonoran transition zone of Roasario de Arriba. Past the charismatic mega flora of the Valle de los Cirios. Onward through the featureless Vizcaino. And finally – finally! To San Juanicio. Rattlesnake Point. Punta Pequena. Scorpion Bay.

In this short film you’ll see Scorpion one year after the trans-peninsula highway was opened. No streets, no services, no Gringo Hill. Hardscrabble, empty, and perfect. Aaberg and Vincent surfed, drank, and licked their wounds. As the film’s Matt Barlow, Jan-Michael, said, “I surf just ’cause it’s good to ride with your friends.” Here’s Jan – and Denny – doing just that.

The North Canyon: Nazaré Calling (2011) with Garrett McNamara directed by Garrett McNamara, Polvo Concepts, Paulo Caldeira, Gustavo Neves, starring Garrett McNamara, Nicole Macias, Cj Macias, Andrew Cotton, Al Mennie (60 minutes)
In October 2011 Garrett McNamara returned to explore the giant waves formed by the Nazaré Canyon. This is the story of one month leading up to an incredible ride, told by a group of people who helped to shine light on one of the biggest wave spots in the world.

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans

Darren Aronofsky will certainly break your heart with his second feature, Requiem for a Dream. Yes, it’s depressing but the film is also an exquisite piece of art that chronicles the desperation and sadness that surrounds drug addiction. On the one hand there is the young and beautiful couple who, with their friends, tumble down the dark road of hard drugs. On the other hand there’s the lonely mother whose delusional solitude leads to a dependency on diet pills/uppers. Somewhere in the middle is either the escape or the end.

Starring: Richard Brewster, Winifred Cushing, Jay Williams

Little Fugitive is a Live Sound Cinema event featuring a live score by Reel Orchestrette.

Joey is a young boy in Brooklyn who, after being tricked into believing he has killed his older brother while his mother is away, escapes to Coney Island. Collecting glass bottles in exchange for money to spend on amusement park rides, Joey forgets his troubles in the wash of amusement park excitement only to return home to find his mother and brother there! Little Fugitive is a landmark film featuring naturalist style and nonprofessional actors that considerably influenced the French New Wave movement.

Little Fugitive was filmed on location in Coney Island and other Brooklyn locations.

The Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival: SCHOOL BELLS. ALL 16mm FILM SHOW!

An assortment of rare, bizarre, funny and quirky 16mm cartoons from the 1910s thru the 40s that you’ll be sure to enjoy.

School bells are ringing! It’s time to get back to class and learn a thing or two, Cartoon Carnival style. Tom Stathes has hand-selected a group of weird, wacky, funny and obscure 16mm cartoons and educational films from the 1910s thru the 1940s that take place in the classroom or are educational in nature. There will be a couple well-known classic cartoon favorites, obscure curiosities and stop-motion wonders; all shown in actual vintage film prints. Pass a note to your classmates and tell them to attend –there’ll be no excuses for playing hooky this time!  

Tom Stathes is a “Cartoon Cryptozoologist” with a rare film print collection comprised of over 1,000 shorts. His archive consists of pivotal series like Farmer Alfalfa, Felix the Cat, Out of the Inkwell, and many more. A native-New Yorker and lifelong cartoon fan, Stathes turned his passion for the city’s early animation legacy into a preservation mission. Tom’s long term goal has been to acquire and preserve early animated films as well as reintroduce them to the public. For more information about this historic undertaking, check out cartoonsonfilm.com and brayanimation.weebly.com.

A story about greed, politics and the land grab of the century, ZIPPER chronicles the battle over an American cultural icon. Q&A with Director Amy Nicholson and guest receive one complimentary Coney Island beer!

Small-time ride operator Eddie Miranda proudly operates a carnival contraption called the Zipper in the heart of Coney Island’s gritty amusement district. When his rented lot is snatched up by a real estate mogul, Eddie and his ride become casualties of a power struggle between the developer and the City of New York over the future of the world-famous destination. Be it an affront to history or simply the path of progress, the spirit of Coney Island is at stake. In an increasingly corporate landscape, where authenticity is often sacrificed for economic growth, the Zipper may be just the beginning of what is lost.

Join Director Bill Cody and Black Lips band members (Jared Swilley, Ian Saint Pé, Joe Bradley, Cole Alexander,Ben Eberbaugh, Jack Hines, Richie Hayes) for a special screening of Kids Like You and Me: A Middle East Tour Film at Nitehawk!

In 2009, The Black Lips started investigating the possibility of a bridge building tour of the Middle East with stops throughout the region. After two years of planning, several uprisings, a civil war the tour finally came to fruition in the fall of 2012. It wasn’t easy either. Promoters in Jordan and Alexandria, Egypt backed out at the last minute because the band had played shows in Israel and a show in Erbil, Iraq had to be changed when an explicit video of the band was viewed by a government official. It all worked out in the end though and the shows in Alexandria and Erbil turned out to be highlights of the tour.

Kids Like You and Me: A Middle East Tour Film documents this journey through one of the most exciting regions in the world including three groundbreaking stops in Egypt. (The last known American rock band to play Egypt being The Grateful Dead in 1978!) Get on the bus with The Black Lips and their good friends, Lebanese indie rockers, Lazzy Lung. See the people of the Middle East the way they really are. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners. Skaters, graffiti artists and musicians. Revolutionaries and dreamers. Kids like you and me. You’ll never look at the Middle East the same way after seeing this film.

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce, Peter Graves

An initially overlooked film that’s now considered a classic, The Night of the Hunter is a tightly composed tale of “good versus evil” told through innocent farm kids and the sociopath preacher who is stalking them.

Bringing Davis Grubb’s novel to the big screen, actor Charles Laughton made his only directorial feature with The Night of the Hunter. All shadows and light, the film is a beautiful juxtaposition of love and hate, quiet moment with bursts of violence, and at its most fundamental, a representation of the struggle between good and evil. And evil enters into the world of a desperate family in the form of the religious fanatic with sociopathic tendencies Harry Powell (played to eery perfection by Robert Mitchum). A serial murderer who marries for money and then kills his brides, he marries a gullible widow (Shelley Winters) for the $10,000 her deceased husband stole. His plan gets complicated when neither of her two children will disclose the whereabouts of the fortune, they head up river to escape the preacher…but he’s always close behind.

The Night of the Hunter is haunting mixture of stark realism and German Expressionism that’s both inspiring and horrifying. Walter Schumman’s score and the cinematography of Stanley Cortez and fundamental to the feel of the film, which is one of a poetic struggle.

Part of the VICE Presents: The Film Foundation Screening Series at Nitehawk Cinema. Two for the Road is a late 1960s British comedy/drama that tracks the winding road of life taken by a couple through their decade-long marriage. Includes a recorded introduction by Schawn Belston from Fox who restored Two for the Road.

While very literally set amongst the travels of destined couple Joanna and Mark Wallace, Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road is a metaphor for the journey taken by two people who, despite all the trials and triumphs, truly love each other. Through time-shifting vignettes, Two for the Road tracks the ebb and flow of the Wallace’’s ten year marriage: from their mismatched courtship after meeting on a road trip to their subsequent marriage to the birth of their children to the periodic infidelity. The film revels equally in the desire to have a partner in life as much as it does the sheer inevitability of people’s needs shifting over time.

Stanley Donen’s (Singing in the Rain) abandonment of a non-linear narrative troubled people upon release but its influence was not hampered. The scene in which Mark and Joanna first meet (he settles for her after losing out on beautiful music student played by Jacqueline Bisset) inspired the film-within-a-film motif in Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973). But it’s ultimately Two for the Road’s embracement of the problematics of love rather than the unrealistic depictions ubiquitous in cinema that truly makes it an timeless classic. The movie ends ambiguously by showing the beginning of the Wallace’s relationship; perhaps a signifier that real relationships are on a continuous cycle of evolvement.

*A portion of each ticket sale goes towards The Film Foundation. Tickets also include complimentary Larceny Bourbon drinks at an after-party in Nitehawk’s downstairs bar! 

TWO FOR THE ROAD (1957, dir. Stanley Donen)
Restored by Twentieth Century Fox in collaboration with The Film Foundation.

Print courtesy of The Film Foundation Conservation Collection at the Academy Film Archive and Twentieth Century Fox.